"We were considering multiple forms of capital when we started. It just felt like the opportunity is so large that venture capital gives us the opportunity to take those risks upfront and have the possibility to generate an outsized return."
The Trump administration continues its AI push, working to defuse public opposition to datacenter energy and water consumption - while dangling a promise to exempt hyperscalers from chip tariffs to help them stock their facilities with GPUs and accelerators. To address public concerns, Washington wants tech giants to commit that their expanding datacenter estates across the US won't spike energy bills or drain local water supplies. According to Politico, a proposed voluntary pact between President Trump, the datacenter industry and megacorps like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta and OpenAI, would establish principles around energy, water use and local community relations.
Constructing datacenters accounts for 39 percent of their total carbon dioxide emissions, almost as much as operating them, according to an environmental analysis covering the entire lifecycle of a facility. The finding comes from a white paper published by European datacenter operator Data4, which conducted a lifecycle assessment (LCA) of one of its own facilities with the assistance of design and engineering consultants APL Data Center.
